🚀 go-pugleaf

I have seen a lot of talk on this group about the speed of 
Windows 3.0 so here are some tests. 

Question. Is 256 colour mode much slower? 
Question. Is standard mode much faster than 386 enhanced mode? 

To understand these tests find and run WINBench.EXE.
Its a PC Magazine program.

My conclusions are that for this particular card, enhanced
mode costs very little in video performance (perhaps it does
slow CPU bound processes this test didn't test that). 
There is a performance cost for 256 colour mode on this video card. 
The card is very much slower in area fill operations in 256 colour
mode. Screen re-paint is not always an area fill type operation.

The program used to do these tests is a windows 2 program that
seems to work in windows 3. I plan to publish tests for a TVGA
clone and a Paradise VGA Plus clone real soon now. The tests
are only comparative between modes not between video cards.
If you want to know which is the fastest video card, this series
of tests wont help.

--------------------------------------------------------
Windows 3.0 Video Speed Tests

Run by: Christopher P Avram,
        Department of Computer Technology,
        Monash University Caulfield Campus.
Run date: November 14, 1990

Using: PC Magazine DispInfo Version 1.2 
       by Charles Petzold 1986

Processor: 386 AT Bus clone; No co-processor; 
           8 Mbytes Memory; no cache; 25MHz
Video card: a Tseng Labs 3000 clone
Video Memory: 512 Kbytes
Video Bus: 8 bit
Shadow Ram enabled.
Video Drivers: From cica.cica.indiana.edu and Microsoft

Windows 386 Enhanced mode

Driver            Line Rectangle Ellipse BitBlt StretchBlt Scroll  Fill
VGA 640x480x16     3.9      11.0   53.8    5.5       79.6    6.6  44.5
Tseng 640x480x16   3.8      11.0   49.4    6.0       81.3    6.7  44.8
Tseng 640x480x256  5.5      43.4  104.9    6.6       92.3    7.4 287.7
Tseng 800x600x16   3.8      13.2   70.9    7.7      104.4    8.8  53.4
VGAfont 800x600x16 3.8       9.9   50.5    5.5       76.4    5.7  33.3*
Tseng 1024x768x16  3.9      17.0   70.9    7.1      108.8    9.3  80.9

Windows Standard mode

Driver            Line Rectangle Ellipse BitBlt StretchBlt Scroll  Fill
Tseng 640x480x256  5.0      42.3   86.2    6.0       86.8    7.3 282.0

Windows Real mode

Driver            Line Rectangle Ellipse BitBlt StretchBlt Scroll  Fill
Tseng 640x480x256  3.8      41.7   67.6    6.0       86.8    6.6 278.6

All data in seconds per 100 operations.

* NOTE: The test is performed in a window whose size is 
set to 60 system font characters wide and 20 system font
characters high. The Tseng drivers install by default using
a large system font (8514), so area based operations operate on
a large screen area. The fonts available are for 640x480 or
1024x760 but 800x600 is between. When in 800x600 mode, I have
run the tests with both system fonts.
-------------------------------------------------

Chris Avram
Department of Computer Technology
Faculty of Computing and Information Technology
Monash University Caulfield Campus

PO Box 197                  Phone + 61 3 573 2196
Caulfield East Vic 3145     Fax   + 61 3 573 2745
AUSTRALIA                   email cpa@monu6.cc.monash.edu.au